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# SUMMARY
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The nosj data format is the latest and greatest way to serialize data such that
it can be shared across arbitrary channels, languages, and applications.
Although formats like JSON, XML, and protocol-buffers already exist, they do
not subscribe to nosj's philosophy of "No one ever needs more than three
data-types!". nosj was created for the purpose of allowing even the most
complex data structures to be represented in an ascii-only format useful for
all known situations usage.

A nosj object consists of a root-level map containing zero or more key-value
pairs (see map data-type). One of the core design-goals of nosj is to have all
unmarshalled data types to be handled by almost any languages' built-in data
types using only the languages built-in libraries for example (non-inclusive
possibilities listed):
	- Java
		- nosj num == double or int
		- nosj simple-string == java.lang.String OR byte[]
		- nosj complex-string == java.lang.String OR byte[]
		- nosj map == java.util.HashMap<String, Object>
	- Python
		- nosj num == float or int
		- nosj simple-string == str OR bytes
		- nosj complex-string == str OR bytes
		- nosj map == dict
	- golang
		- nosj num == float64 or int
		- nosj simple-string == string OR byte[]
		- nosj complex-string == string OR byte[]
		- nosj map == map[string]{}interface

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# DATA-TYPES
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The nosj format consists of three data-types: maps, nums, and strings. Each is
described in-depth below.

# Data-Type: num
A nosj num represents an integer value between positive-infinity and
negative-infinity. A marshalled num consists of the value's two's complement
representation (including the sign bit) in binary format as a sequence of ascii
"1"s and "0"s.

Examples:
    Marshalled nosj num: 1010
    Numerical value: -6

    Marshalled nosj num: 11110110
    Numerical value: -10

# Data-Type: string
A nosj string is a sequence of ascii bytes which can be used to represent
arbitrary internal data such as ascii, unicode, or raw-binary. There are two
distinct representations of a nosj string data-type as described below.

### Representation #1: Simple-Strings
In the simple representation, the string is restricted to a set of
commonly-used ascii characters which (according to our extensive market survey)
are the most-liked by humans (i.e. upper and lowercase ascii letters, ascii
digits, spaces (" " / 0x20), and tabs ("\t" / 0x09)). Simple-strings are
followed by a trailing "s" which is NOT part of the data being encoded.

Examples:
    Marshalled nosj simple-string: abcds
    String value: "abcd"

    Marshalled nosj simple-string: ef ghs
    String value: "ef gh"

### Representation #2: Complex-Strings
In the complex representation, the string is percent-encoded in order to reuse
pre-existing and well-tested libraries such as those used for encoding/decoding
URLs. Where as simple-string may only represent a restricted set of characters,
complex-strings can encode arbitrary bytes. While the marshalled-form can
contain multiple percent-encoded bytes, it MUST include at least one (1)
percent-encoded byte.

Examples:
    Marshalled nosj complex-string: ab%2Ccd
    String value: "ab,cd"

    Marshalled nosj complex-string: ef%00gh
    String value: "ef<null-byte>gh"

# Data-Type: map
A nosj map is a sequence of zero or more key-value pairs that take the form of
"<key-1:value-1,key-2:value-2,...>" similar to the conceptual hash-map data
structure. A nosj map MUST start with the two character "BEGIN" sequence ("(<")
and end with the two-character "END" sequence (">)"). Map keys MUST be an
ascii-string consisting of one or more lowercase ascii letters ("a" through "z"
/ 0x61 through 0x7a ) only. Map values may be any of the three canonical nosj
data-types (map, string or num) and there is no specification-bound on how many
maps may be nested within each other. Though map values are not required to be
unique, map keys MUST be unique within the current map (though they may be
duplicated in maps at other levels of "nesting").

Examples:
    Marshalled nosj map: (<x:abcds>)
    Key-1: "x"
    Value-1: "abcd" (string)

    Marshalled nosj map: (<x:abcds,y:1001>)
    Key-1: "x"
    Value-1: "abcd" (string)
    Key-2: "y"
    Value-2: -7 (num)

    Marshalled nosj map: (<x:(<y:1000>)>)
    Key-1: "x"
    Value-1: (map)
        Key-1-1: "y"
        Value-1-1: -8 (num)

A properly formatted nosj map contains NO WHITESPACE characters (spaces, tabs,
newlines / " ", "\t", "\n" / 0x20, 0x09, 0x0a) unless it is as part of one of
the below special-cases:
	- Whitespace is part of a simple-string which is part of that string.
		- Valid: "(<a:b s>)"
	- Whitespace is before or after the start/end of the map which should be
	  ignored.
		- Valid: "      (<a:bs>)"
		- Valid: "(<a:bs>)     "

Examples of invalid whitespace:
		- "(<a :bs>)"
		- "(< a:bs>)"
		- "(<a:bs >)"

ERRATA:
26Aug2024 - Fixed typo in example: "6" --> "-6"